The Child Who Changed Him
by Leia 96
Summary: The Marrok was having a relatively normal day when the young, desperate girl showed up, begging him to take the rebellious coyote child who would force her way into his heart. How could he say no? Oneshot.


_**AN: **__I wrote this a long time ago, when I decided that, though difficult, it is _possible_ to write a decent fanfic for Patricia Briggs. I wish I could have come up with a more creative idea, but I suppose it's not bad for my first Mercy Thompson fic. Read and review! _

**The Child Who Changed Him**

Bran Cornick was having a relatively normal day, if there was such a thing. No one was dying-except for the mate of an Alpha in Dallas, Texas, and actually, she was already dead and Charles on his way home. Leah wasn't being particularly obnoxious, Samuel wasn't operating on anyone. It was not full moon, and Bran was not currently having to work on the control of some rogue wolf. There were not any new wolves in the pack at the moment. Therefore, Bran Cornick was having a relatively normal day.

He was on the couch sitting next to Samuel. Samuel had the television on and together they were watching it. It was sports, which were sometimes interesting and sometimes not. Today basketball was on, and Bran was not interested. Samuel wasn't really either, and yet here they were, watching it.

When there was a quiet knock and the door, Bran got up to go get it, Samuel following after turning the TV off.

Bran wasn't really expecting anyone on this relatively normal day, so he was surprised to see a small curvy woman with attractive features and artificially blonde hair on his doorstep. No, not woman, he corrected himself. This was a child, maybe sixteen or seventeen. And she was definitely human.

She had fierce green eyes and her mouth was set into a determined line. Her arms were folded over her chest. She was tiny, and still a child, but she would not take no for an answer to whatever her question was.

"Hello," Bran said. The girl unfolded her arms.

"Hi. I need to talk to Bran Cornick. Is one of you him?" she demanded. Her tone was very commanding, and she drew herself up until she seemed to be as tall as Bran and Samuel. She would be a very dominant wolf, he thought.

"That's me. How can I help you?" Bran said pleasantly. He was rather amused at this forceful human girl. The girl's eyes narrowed suspiciously, but he could tell that she was slightly apprehensive, and nervous.

"My kid," she began, jamming a thumb in the direction of the car behind her. Bran could only assume the child in question was in the old station-wagon the girl was pointing to. "She's a werewolf." The girl paused. "I think."

Bran soaked this in, and turned to Samuel, who looked skeptical. There was no way this young girl could have a child old enough to survive the change, unless she was much older than she looked. Bran turned back to her.

"You _think_?" Bran asked. The girl nodded once, sharply.

"There's. . . been some debate on the subject," she explained.

Bran raised an eyebrow. "Ms. . . "

"Thompson," she supplied for him.

"Thompson," he repeated. "Ms. Thompson, you would know if your daughter was a werewolf."

Ms. Thompson raised her eyebrow right back at him. "How?"

Bran chuckled. "Just trust me. You would know." Bran gestured at the station-wagon Ms. Thompson had pointed to earlier. "I take it she's in the car? Why don't you bring her out here so I can speak with her?"

Ms. Thompson sighed. "I can go get her, but she can't talk to you. She's just a baby."

It was Samuel's turn to raise his eyebrow. "A baby?"

Bran was surprised, too. He'd been expecting a little kid, a toddler even. "Yes, almost four months now," Ms. Thompson said firmly.

"Then I can assure you, Ms. Thompson, that your four-month-old daughter is not a werewolf," Bran said.

Ms. Thompson's voice turned frantic. "No! Please! Just meet her! I can't take care of a werewolf and Jonathan said that she wasn't a werewolf but that you might be able to help me and I really _can't _take care of a girl who turns into a wolf, I mean, what would I do about daycare? Or school? What am I-"

"Ms. Thompson, why don't you go get your daughter and we'll take it from there. I'm interested to meet this girl," Bran said, holding a hand out to stop her frantic word flow. Ms. Thompson brushed a strand of blonde hair from her face and nodded. She turned quietly and went over to the old station-wagon. Bran turned to Samuel as they watched the girl open the back door, then cry out in sudden frustration that puzzled Bran and Samuel.

"Damn it, Mercedes," Ms. Thompson whispered to her daughter. Bran knew that Ms. Thompson had no way of knowing that he and Samuel could hear her.

After a few moments of Ms. Thompson's odd struggling, she started walking toward Bran and Samuel with a baby girl in her arms.

As Ms. Thompson and her baby drew nearer to Bran and Samuel, Bran noticed that the baby did not smell normal. She smelled like-

"Coyote," Samuel murmured. And as Ms. Thompson got close enough for Bran to see the child, everything suddenly made much more sense.

For the little child's father was clearly Native American. The baby had dark skin, a very similar color to Charles' skin, and the uneven patch of hair on top of her head was pitch black. Though Bran knew that Ms. Thompson's hair was not naturally blonde, he could see that her roots were light brown, meaning the black on the baby was from the father.

And if the child was part Native American, she could very well be a Walker. As Bran hadn't seen a Walker in hundreds of years, it seemed unlikely, but it also seemed the only possible answer.

Ms. Thompson was directly in front of him again.

"That child is not a werewolf," he told her bluntly. Ms. Thompson sighed.

"That's what Jonathan said, but there's _something_ wrong with her."

Bran sighed. "Ms. Thompson, why don't you bring. . . what's your daughter's name?" Bran, of course, had already heard Ms. Thompson call the child Mercedes, but he wasn't sure exactly how much this girl knew about wolves, and wasn't sure if she would know that they had heard that.

Ms. Thompson sighed. "This is Mercedes."

Bran glanced at Samuel, and he was watching the little girl with wide eyes, a smile growing on his face. Samuel was fond of children.

"Ms. Thompson, why don't you bring Mercedes inside, and we can. . . discuss this," Bran said. Ms. Thompson nodded and Bran backed into the doorway, right around the same moment that Mercedes started trying to wriggle free of her mother.

"No, Mercedes, not now. Please, just be still, Mercedes!" Ms. Thompson was trying to calm the girl, but Mercedes was not having it. She thrashed and squirmed and finally, to the astonishment of Bran, for he truly hadn't seen a Walker in hundreds of years and had assumed that they were extinct, shifted quickly and painlessly into a tiny coyote pup.

Ms. Thompson shrieked and dropped the pup, and the pup started running in circles around Samuel's and Bran's feet, yipping and clawing their ankles. Bran chuckled. Mercedes was clearly quite a handful.

Ms. Thompson bent down to try and pick up the insanely energetic pup, but Samuel had beat her to it. As she straightened up, she looked suspiciously at Samuel who was stroking the coyote into contentment, and then waved an arm in defeat. Go ahead, that arm said. If you can get the kid to calm down, that's great. She bent down and picked up the shreds of the girl's clothing and then followed Samuel and Bran into the house.

Bran led her into his office, Samuel and the baby at his side. He sat down on one side of the desk with Samuel and gestured for Ms. Thompson to sit across from them. Once she was sitting, he gave her one word.

"Explain."

She took a deep breath and nodded her head once.

"My name is Margi Thompson and I'm seventeen years old. I met Joe at the rodeo. He was a cowboy, they called him Joe Old Coyote. He told me that his family came from a line of medicine men or something-obviously he was Native American. I guess I know why they called him Joe Old Coyote, now. But. . . the night we met, we. . . well, you know." Her cheeks turned slightly pink and she was suddenly looking at the floor. "Anyway, he died just two days after. And then it was all fine and dandy except for I was pregnant with Mercedes. And my parents tried to get me to get an abortion but Joe was dead and I thought he, you know, should have a part of him living on or something. I dunno. . ." She paused.

"Go on," Bran encouraged. Mercedes had turned back into a human again though, and Samuel was wrapping her up in his coat, for she now had no clothes. Margi gestured for him to hand the baby to her, and once he did so, she pulled a change of clothes and extra diaper out of her purse. She continued talking as she changed the baby.

"Well, Mercedes was born, and it was, you know, pretty normal. Hectic and stressful of course because I'm, you know, still in high school, but it was normal. Until about a month ago when. . . I went into Mercedes' room and. . . she wasn't there! There was this coyote pup there, and at first I was completely freaked out because I thought that the coyote had eaten her or something, but then she turned back into my baby and I nearly had a heart attack!

"Then I remembered what Joe's rodeo name had been, and of course that made so much sense. So I went to track down his family because no way can I take care of some were-coyote baby and still have, you know, a life. And I managed to find Joe's grandfather's uncle, and he was a werewolf.

"Now, here's where I'm a little confused, but whatever. Jonathan said that Mercedes wasn't the same thing he was, but it was something that ran in the family. And I told him that he should just take her. Not because I don't want her because Lord knows I do, but I told you, I can't raise a were-baby! And he is a werewolf and he could do it, but he said his pack wasn't safe for her and that she would be safest if I took her to your pack. Which I did. And now I'm here."

Bran was mildly impressed with Margi's determination. Something in him approved of her. Even if she was an unmarried high school student with a baby.

"You want me to raise your baby for you?" he asked. She nodded in that quick, sharp movement again.

"And. . . I want a better explanation of what she actually _is. _Jonathan was being really vague and. . . vague."

Bran sighed. "What the child actually is," he began, "is something I had thought, until the moment you brought her out of the car, had been extinct for hundreds of years. You see, the vampires. . . severely dislike them, because they are the only creature that has a possibility of finding their daytime resting spot. They hunted them into extinction, or so I'd thought. I'm afraid to say the werewolves probably helped; your Jonathan was spot on. Werewolves tend to get territorial and defensive around other predators, even other predators who are much more helpless and much less violent."

Margi exhaled sharply and crossed her arms again. "First of all," she said. "I'm not leaving Mercedes here if you're going to get. . . what were the words you used? 'Territorial and defensive' around her. And second, just tell me _what she is._"

Bran sighed again. "She's a walker," he said simply. "Walker comes from the the term Skin-Walker. There were certain Native Americans who used dark magic and the skin of certain animals to change into that animal. They called themselves Skin-Walkers. There were other Natives who seemed to be perfectly normal humans. No extra strength, just slightly heightened senses and a very slight immunity to some magic. And of course, the ability to turn into a coyote. Some, like yourself, confused them for werewolves, though they are very different. The majority of the Europeans, however, confused them for Skin-Walkers, and so they were forever known as walkers." Margi's eyes were wide and her shoulders tense.

"I told you that the vampires hunted the walkers into extinction, for the most part. I told you that the werewolves become overly violent and aggressive around the walkers. I told you that walkers are rather fragile and helpless in comparison." Margi nodded in that sharp movement again.

"Mercedes does not belong in a wolf pack. She is not a werewolf. However," Bran paused, examining Margi. "I understand your dilemma, Ms. Thompson. You are young, and barely able to take care of a human child, let alone a walker. She will need protection that you aren't capable of providing from a world that you never even knew existed." She nodded and wiped her eye with the heel of her hand, suddenly holding back tears.

"Is that a no, then, Bran Cornick?" she asked, her voice thick.

Bran glanced at the child, now crawling around under her mother's chair. The child would never be pack, if he agreed to take her, but that was true of many of the residents of Aspen Creek. The child would have a rough childhood, but she would manage. She would have a strong family, and she would get to hunt in the wild on a regular basis. She would be taught to protect herself as best she could in a fight, she would be taught to use her heightened senses to her advantage. She would be safe, certainly. Bran was strong enough to keep his wolves from harming her, and he was strong enough to protect her from any other wolves or vampires who got it in their head to attack her. She would be loved by someone. Not by the whole pack, of course, nowhere near that many wolves would love her. But whoever her foster parents would be, they would love her. And of course, she already had a couple of admirers from the Cornick family.

Who was he to deny such a life to an innocent baby? Who was he to send this poor, confused girl away from here with an impossible daughter to raise?

There were wolves in his pack who wanted children, he knew. _Well_, he thought, sighing, _today is their lucky day._

"No, Ms. Thompson. That is not a no."


End file.
